Suitcase Act
by Annie Christ
Summary: An enamored contortionist finds 'himself' in an obsessive relationship during the frontal years of the 1970s. Pickled babies, fire throwing and Siamese twins; there's only so many expectations two 'boys' can live up to.
1. Corkscrew

_Have a redone story._

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**Chapter One: Corkscrew **

My grandfather had four arms. No, that's not poor enunciation on my part. He wasn't writing by foot, rolling cigars with big toes doubling as makeshift opposable thumbs, or sipping his brandy with a glass cusped between the curves of his feet. There's no ornate implication he had a wife so traditionally dedicated to his wellbeing she could have been figuratively referred to as an extra pair of hands. The fact of the scientific matter is that—somewhere throughout the process of his itsy embryonic cells multiplying—there was more than likely an identical sibling attempting to do the same while they bobbled about in amniotic fluid. Nature is morbid in one of those fascinating ways where I spent the majority of my teenage years admiring my grandfather because he had managed to establish his legacy on the grounds of fetal absorption. His inability to do anything but be a conqueror dated back to the first trimester, and he used what some saw as an incredible misfortune as means to take over a universe of castaways. Being referred to as _freak_ was everything but derogatory; though I had been born into a world as if God himself had filled my genetic ice tray, I was hell bent on being just like him.

That being said, there are two ends to the spectrum of being human. There is deformed and there is the even eerier state of perfection. I'm the concisely symmetrical man taken from the canal of a woman with predominantly Italian blood; though she simply gave the world another squabbling bastard, my mismatched features of cerise hair and eyes like the emeralds on my grandfather's fingers were what spawned an unending circulation of rumors. No one knew who my father was. My mother didn't utter a single word as if hoping someone would assume I was the result of Immaculate Conception, which was foolish form on her part. The travelling company eventually knew better, and by the time I was eight _I_ knew better. Whether or not she ripped out a goat's throat to summon the devil for procreation was up for severe speculation, but considering the fact she was a geek I could see where the idea might derive from. Boring old mother—the poor woman. So stultifying in her normalcy my grandfather had her teeth filed to points so she could perform by ripping out the throats of animals. I suppose talent can skip a generation.

After my mother gave birth to me in the back of a soggy wood trailer kept together by a lick and a promise, the news the ringmaster's grandson hadn't been stillborn spread like wild fire. This would become a theme throughout my life where I could walk into a room and be the cigarette cherry tossed onto the gasoline encircled gun powder. From the beginning of my life people began making the misconception beauty meant goodness, and when my grandfather finally stopped to see what the ruckus was about, his daughter was on the brink of death from bleeding out and I was screeching and healthy.

He disregarded his teenage offspring for my bundled form and decided she had no right to me from that moment on. He named me. Mother had wanted to name me Lea, but he had decided the name wasn't strong enough for someone he had a mind to cultivate into his successor. In one sweeping moment of tyranny, I became Axel. Beforehand, my unnerving quietness in the womb had made him assume I would make another addition to his jarred collection, and he had never been happier to be wrong. Before I had teeth he swore to force promise into my suckling form.

"Axel Serafino—you're so fucking dead. Deader than a motherfucking doorknob, you total skeaze-whore. Don't give a single shit who your granddaddy is, _boy_. You're about to know what it's like to have a pitchfork shoved up your asshole!"

Things have a knack for becoming unendingly histrionic in a world where you're considered top tier not only in appearance but talent. Granted most of what I dealt with was self-implemented, but being in my early twenties and constantly tempted by my fellow performers made me destined for a few short comings. My ultimate flaw just so happened to be an insatiable need to make sure every woman I stumbled across remembered my name. Whether it meant pushing down pantyhose or wooing them with the largest pile of bullshit known to man, I was up for the challenge. My self-motivated competitive edge had trouble carved into it with gratuitously messy stabs, and the amount of times husbands had caught me making their wives enthusiastically say my name wasn't something I kept track of. It happened more than thrice, though; enough to have me blacklisted from the trapeze artists' trailers. I was apparently hell bent on morphing them into a string of whorehouses that would put any French establishment to shame.

"Wait, wait." Olette tossed me my shirt with her foot, and I caught it before shoving open the trailer's window with a single hand. There was a fleeting exchange of looks where I knew her young husband was going to give her the kind of reckoning I had no place to interfere with, but we said nothing. Instead there was a split-second where a smirk glided across my own cocky mug and she returned it with a smile. The armless brunette who drank wine with her feet and applied makeup in front of a crowd for pay was showgirl wonderment without a defense mechanism. I only wished I had the emotional capacity to pretend I genuinely cared about her wellbeing.

The foundational years of my life were a constructive blur where I camped beneath creaking trailers plagued by the filth of bodies, dove under elephants, and shoved any new performer's child into the lion's cage. The cage treatment was a form of initiation. While watching the fresh face scramble for the bars and screech like a pig being slaughtered I had laughed myself to tears in between my groundwork acrobatic lessons.

My best friends were a pair of Siamese sisters who distinguished themselves by cutting and bleaching their hair, and they stood beside me with mirthful oceanic eyes until one of the animal keepers were lured in by the shrieking. The second we were caught we always found ourselves busting organs from the kind of laughing that halted breath in lungs and made speaking impossible. From there, we stumbled away from the cages with shaking shoulders and a thirst for blood. No one survived in our circle without the kind of diamond spine needed in order to handle the creeping vermin of my grandfather's travelling acts: our cruelty was a coarse service to those who thought otherwise.

"They'll get over it!"

Those words had fallen from my lips on numerous occasions.

My introduction to the handmade devices that were two torches at the end of thick chains happened on my eleventh birthday, and my grandfather had set them down in front of me without much of an explanation. The fascination with fire had been limited to me being enamored with the suitcase act fire performers we occasionally brought on when in bigger cities. They were never permanent. Aside from that, I smoked like a freight train and was a habitual lighter clicker. I had never seen myself as anything worthy of that kind of talent. The ringmaster knew better, though. He knew what he was doing when he put me into the gymnastics that formed the kind of biceps needed to throw the chains around. He knew what he was doing because not only was I a pretty face, but he had coddled my personality to be nothing but a heaping dose of egocentrism. He needed someone cocky, pretty and talented in his troupe. The show was beginning to age, and there was nothing more powerful than having the contrasting romanticism of me amongst the deteriorating acts of malformation. Of course, that entire decision was the double ended sword he knew he would have to deal with until he took his final breath.

Monsters have always had a knack for turning on their creators. I'm not implying I necessarily turned on my grandfather, but I let him spoil me until my guts stank of rot and the majority of those surrounding me wanted to feed me to the occasionally starved animals. Not that I cared because everyone was aware of my divine right to their payroll and performance cuts. Jealousy was hushed when I ate up every audience's applause with the kind of gusto and shit eating grins I knew were infuriating. From the moment I stepped out into center ring there was absolutely no denying the worth of the torturous training I had wept through as a child. All the back breaking muscle manipulation and stretching had paid off. The humble beginnings of third degree burns coating my forearms no longer seemed quite as inane. My grandfather had anticipated my worth from the moment the baby blues shifted to an unforeseen jade, and as always, he had been right on the money. That being said, it's never good luck to count chickens before they've hatched.

"I wrote you a song."

Naminé and Xion stepped toward me. The night and day Siamese sisters were technically identical; but unless someone understood how Siamese twins developed, then one might have thought otherwise. Naturally brunettes, I had watched them slowly morph their act from being adorable identical siblings to a pair of individuals with their separate talents.

Unable to break the habit of finishing each other's sentences, I was never sure who was saying what and when, so it wasn't until I turned toward them did I realize it was Xion who had spoken.

She continued. "You should listen to it sometime, and I think—"

"Hold it, baby girl," I interrupted.

In front of me was the radio, and the sound of the grizzly voiced man sputtering through static about the big war had me smoking like a lazy dragon and overly absorbed. I decided to finish with an explanation.

"I'm listening."

Ever since I could remember there had been a continuous and obviously pointless conflict encircling Vietnam. From the moment my grandfather had managed to get his circus touring in the states we had seen nothing but an ever shifting populace where the majority of our audiences were women and children waiting for sons and fathers to return to the homestead. It was an era with empty placemats at dinner tables and a draft sparking the kind of riots I meandered past with subtle disinterest. The girls I pretended to love were nothing but faithful high school sweethearts waiting on boys rotting in cesspool trenches, and someone once told me it was what revolution looked like. The anticipated bulleted down corpses never to come home, and when we all stood around the television in my grandfather's trailer, we watched the gore ridden footage of what the United States continued to endorse. That being said, the youth was spitting venom. Half the people doing our grunt work were boys hiding from the draft, and I couldn't blame them. I sure as shit was glad I wasn't a citizen.

"Don't listen to that malarkey." Naminé reached in front of me and turned the knob to off. She was the blonde, and sometimes I liked to think she was in love with me. "It's just depressing."

"The pragmatist things have a knack for being that way, huh?"

Naminé's eyes nearly rolled into the back of her head, and her Russian accent slayed me. "You're always talking like you know things."

"I do, though."

Xion laughed and side glanced at her sister with a little mocking eye roll, and I nearly cackled before Naminé cut me off. "I'm on my last leg with your grandfather."

"Well, darling, that's a little sad to hear because you've only got one."

Another laugh from the girl with her short black bob, and she looked over at her sister. "Don't lose it. I need you to get around."

They shared a set of legs, and from what they had alluded to, they also shared a set of reproductive organs. Sadly, I had never ventured beneath the frock in search of answers. Medically impossible to separate, the two girls were stuck together for the long haul. When they walked their arms were typically wrapped around one another's waists, and they whispered observations like faeries haunting woods. Naminé and Xion were a sight to behold; it was a damn taboo because they were equally beautiful, and I knew they had been with men before. A lot of my expressions involved contorted grimaces and furrowed brows when they had the audacity to drop their modesty and let me know they had been fucked. There wasn't much I could say about it, so I typically blinked through the mental images until the years stopped ticking off my life. I would be lying if I attempted to say I hadn't wanted it at one point, but even I knew my limitations. I would have chased them for the rest of my life if I was determined enough.

"What'd he do?" I finally asked before dropping the cigarette and crushing the cherry with the heel of my black boot. "Cut the budget for your costuming? I told him not to do that, you know."

"He's adding more people. As if our contracts weren't limited enough already, and you know when he redoes them next year with these additions we won't have a pot to piss in." Anytime Naminé swore I had to smile because she was too sweet on her bad days. She was tough as nails but typically soft spoken. "I don't think we're going to be able to stay if this keeps up."

"He's adding American bastards other than Xigbar?" How I hadn't known was beyond me. He told me everything, and this was news. My suspicions were immediately piqued. "When did you hear this, again?"

"Just now from Xigbar. It's spreading through the grapevine." Naminé faintly frowned. "You have to do something."

Out of nowhere, Xion reached over and shoved Naminé's head before speaking with doe eyes. "What can he do? We've needed the fresh talent for months. Xemnas knows this is a lucrative move on his part and his part alone. I can't imagine why you're so concerned when we're the young faces. He'll probably put the old performers in retirement or ask them to step down into training positions. We're fine, so I don't think Axel needs to say anything right now. He wouldn't let anything happen to us if there was a real threat."

"She's got a point," I said as I reached for the knob on the radio again. "Don't let it stress you out. You'll get wrinkles."

Naminé didn't look at me as if I had reassured many of her woes, but the pair drifted away because Xion had a piano to practice and her sister was devoted to another painting. I was left to my own devices in front of my trailer. In the distance the tent was being pulled upright with the kind of strained biceps I repeatedly watched shape up as sweltering summers passed. Boys walked onto our troupe and went on with their lives as men. The result was inevitable throughout the repetitive sicknesses, hangovers, and sexual expeditions we all did our best to deny ever happened until someone got a rash.

At the end of the day, we were all suffering from hardheaded jadedness where being twenty-four and bursting with the desperate need to kill boredom brought on nothing but trouble. Mingling together for quick swaps of booze and bereavement wasn't uncommon, and I endorsed it. I mean—hell, why not? We were young and talented and exceptionally belligerent. Our mentors had made us that way.

The slamming of a trailer door ripped my stare away from the radio, and I watched as Larxene stepped out of her cushy quarters that rivaled mine. Her hair was swept back into a ponytail, and she was hardly wearing any makeup; which was not only horrifying to look at but generally concerning. The blonde dame was one hell of a brutal act where she could not only throw knives and swallow swords, but I had watched her walk on broken light bulbs with a the kind of leer men loved and I despised. She had paraded around with her head held high and sense of superiority since I was a toddler, but everyone knew the only reason my grandfather kept her around was because she enjoyed being the show's feminine sex appeal. Nothing wrong with that, but she was such a bitch I still snubbed her for it with the kind of molten fury occasionally seen as nonsensical. The second the business was handed to me I planned on feeding her to the bearded lady.

"Serafino Jr." She barked at me. She literally sounded like she had barked. Truly, Larxene was a bitch in every sense of the word. "What is your old man up to?"

"Contrary to popular belief," I began, "I don't know everything the man does. You people act like I wipe his ass or something."

"_Oh_." She feigned surprise. "You don't?"

I was going to tear her tits right off her chest. "Did you need me for anything else or are you just going to keep spouting shit at me?"  
"As great of a toilet as you do make," she slid her hand beneath my chin and I had to begin breathing as if walking myself through labor, "you should see the new members that just sauntered onto the campsite."

I jerked my head away with an undisclosed eye roll. "I'm not that interested."

"Darling, darling, you _should_ be."

Deciding my caustic nature could venture onto the back burner, I looked her over. "Why's that?"

Before she even spoke she was gloating. "There's a pretty boy."

"Get bent," I snapped and plopped down in my lawn chair. "As if I fucking care."

Larxene scowled, and I returned the expression. We stared off until she let out a shrill noise of frustration and walked away from me with a wave of her hand. She wasn't threatened by anything, and it was vexatious. Her entire demeanor was enough to make me want to hate fuck her and leave her on the corner in a city slum. The gall was incredible, and what was worse? The whore knew I cared. Unlike her, I was constantly threatened by the possibility of being replaced, forgotten, left to rot on the table of wannabe artists. The danger of that indignity was constantly worming through me like an apple on the orchard floor. It was interesting how I could be so self-assured while simultaneously trembling from the thought of someone not caring.

It was why I drummed my fingers along the arm of my chair only to push myself up with the kind of force that threw back the seat and forced my elbows to pop. Striding through the encampment, I only raised my hand to acknowledge the people tossing me greetings because this was business. This was the kind of business that roasted my organs, but I wasn't going to bottom feed off Larxene's taunting by heading toward the commotion that was greeting new members. There was a source with graying hair and suits imported straight from the motherland, and I was the only one allowed to question him. The strange hierarchy within my grandfather's circus was as if I was the Christ to God himself. Though, maybe I was more the anti-Christ to his Belial because my devotion was flighty and tipped with raw nerves. It was in the way that constituted me as his ward, but I had a knack for addressing my own agenda first and foremost because _why the hell not_?

His trailer was the most luxurious in the caravan by superiority rights, but it was jam packed with the kind of collections I had admired since he used his own child as a throw away wet nurse. My basinet had sat directly beside the shelf of his pickled punks. While most spent their infancy reaching up with pudgy fingers for the mobile swinging around twinkling stars and zoo animals, I was staring at the corpses of still born children stripped from the womb and shoved into jars filled with formaldehyde. They were statements of what had originally been expected of me, and my grandfather had reminded me every day until I received my own trailer that those were what I could have been. I had his prayers to thank for my existence, but I knew better. He'd never prayed for anyone but himself, and I was beginning to think any prayers from him were ones attempting to out will God.

"Old man," which wasn't much of a greeting as I pulled on his office trailer's door handle, "I've got a question."

That question was apparently going to have to wait because standing in front of the ringmaster Xemnas' cluttered desk was someone so vertically impaired the stunted growth reverberated through my lanky bones. Tiny would've been insulting, and referring to him as a midget was about five inches inaccurate. The cherub boy with a swan's posture would have been lucky to reach my pectorals on a good day. There were lips shaped into a Cupid's bow directly placed beneath his tiny nose, and before I could appreciate the fact he had been torn directly from the Sistine Chapel I was plunged into a murky pool of threat. The thought shifted hard, though. Any form of peril on my part would feed directly into Larxene's ever lovely ability to play the role of a seer. The last thing I wanted was for her to be in the realm of right, so I sucked up the initial jealousy of a freckle dusted snot nosed brat. The kid couldn't have been a day above eighteen.

Our eyes fleetingly locked and it was the titan collision of ice with God's green earth, but I disregarded him in the name of myself. "People are talking."

My grandfather was grayed and dressed to the nines with nowhere to go but into the obedient subconscious of those he paid. Flinty eyes shifted toward me, and he only seemed vaguely interested in me before he acknowledged what I'd said. "I'm in the middle of business."

"And I'm talking business."

Unlike the complete stranger beside me, my posture was heavily determined on how much weight I could keep laden on the balls of my feet. There was sharp forward directive that shifted my entire method of standing because the old man was staring through me with embers for eyes. Will silently clashed with will, and I refused to abandon my abruptly set post until he excused the blond boy who more than likely hadn't even managed to land a pubic hair on his yet-to-drop testicles. The worst part was the utter complete disregard on his part because there hadn't even been the contemplation of an introduction. I was a millisecond away from foaming at the mouth. Rabies was coursing through my saliva, and I wanted to rip into his neck open until he gave me the kind of attention I fucking demanded. What made the little shit stain beside me so important?

He wasn't going to budge—and for the first time since I was seventeen years old—I turned around and yanked open the door only to slam it behind me. The satisfaction of the screen door's glass shattering on the wooden steps released a droplet of my rage like a spritz of perfume. I wasn't calmed, though. Being calm when shut down and made to look like an inferior was beyond my comfort zone. My heart was hammering while my ears burned an impressive red, and if I didn't stop gritting my teeth, then I'd be paying a hefty dentist bill.

"I sense juvenile wrath! There's a lot of urine and saliva, and the stench just offed a third world country! That's impressive even for you, dude."

Xigbar's voice carried from his window, and I gave the California native the kind of look that implied zero amusement. He was with his blond and excruciatingly English Luxord, and there were joints lazily hanging out of the corner of their mouths while smoke filtered from their shared trailer like the entrance to Dracula's castle. The pair's heads were inches apart, and they were daringly close in the way that I had wondered about their relationship status multiple times. The thought of them being gay forced my nostrils to flare from a multitude of uncertainties. Images of them making the beast with two backs always filtered through my sparking neurons, and I inhaled a sharp breath before wondering if yanking out each strip of my chaotically colored hair would force the mental cinematic into static. My own love life was up in blazes already. I didn't want to focus on someone else's, especially when it was technically considered a mental illness.

Into my trailer I went. The door shut behind me slowly because after so many fired up tantrums my grandfather had forced one of our handymen to rig it to where it was physically impossible to slam it shut. The glass on his shattering only minutes before was a prime example of why that had been done. Nobody tells you how expensive doors are.

There were pickled punks lining the tops of my shelves because-after my grandfather had stopped showing them in his freak show museum-he had ran out of room to store them in his office. Sometimes, when I was worn through and heavy lidded with my lavender walls reflecting off the hypnotic glass protecting the delicate tissues of infants, my body grew warm with nostalgic comfort. They were the Mason jar equivalent to a nut encasing protein saturated meat. I had a theory it was from where my grandfather had settled me beside them before I could retain memories, but something about the hovering children orphaned and grave-less soothed my nerves. My favorite was the one collecting dust above the dresser containing my day clothes, and she was the only one I personally swiped a rag over during my down time.

There were some my grandfather didn't know the causes of death for, but this one had been born without a heart. She had entered the womb with a beat, and as if an unforeseeable set of fingers had plunged into her tiny ribcage while fighting through the canal, her heart had been plucked free from her body and devoured. She was both a medical phenomenal and the kind of tragedy once capable of selling tickets. Sad baby, she was, and she was the only child I dared to have. I was too selfish for something that needed oxygen.

My feet padded across the central room of my living space, and I had to get to my writing wall. This was the wall I had started as a not-so-private journal that was as secretive as it was pronounced. In black marker I had repeatedly scrawled on because sometimes I wanted to scream. There was no reason for it; but I wanted to scream until my lungs flattened inside my torso, and there were slimy guts caught in my esophagus. This was my compromise for being obnoxious, but sometimes it didn't cut the cake. Not when I found myself stabbing the wall with marker until speckles of muddy ink found their way onto my arms and face, and I gnashed teeth until lips were caught and gums bled out like a virgin cunt.

Those were the nights when whiskey stopped helping, and I wished I knew myself. Sometimes people think they've got themselves down like the back of their hands, but then they flip the backs to the floor and find their palms glaring back at them. This space is foreign and frightening, and there's nothing you can do about it but restart your life and hope for a constant. I continuously travelled and had never been given the chance to make roots and press the tips of my fingers into the soil of my life. I was a passport and baggage; there was so much baggage. It was the kind of weight I carried until my bones snapped and the inability resolve myself overthrew my entire plain of moods like the black plague. I was a thick cough and painted on bruises. I was the man who feasted on the smiles of an audience but never found any of my own.

My ass made friends with the floor, and I reached for the basket of markers I stashed alongside my modest bookshelf. I had a life that circled around NPR and the novels I picked up from the used bookstores dotted throughout almost every city we spent a week in. Sometimes, I had no idea what I was reading, but I liked words and what they did to human beings because when you hop borders the way I did, it was easy to make love with the way a cluster of individuals could communicate. Laughing and smiling and crying and fighting were all the same no matter where you went, but words were different. Words shifted the way climates differentiated with just a trail of mountain tops, and somehow every foreign word on a page didn't seem lost to me. Whether the paper was worn from years of love or crisp and hot off the press, it didn't matter. There was feeling there. I loved every spine as much as the next one.

The marker was soon uncapped, and with an eyebrow heading toward my widow's peak, I wondered what needed to be said. For someone who adored the rest of the Earth's words, well, I didn't find much significance behind my own. It was why—when I began dragging ink across faded words I had attempted to scrub up with a sponge and soapy water several times beforehand—I wasn't sure what part of my body was telling me how my personal letters could make much of a statement.

"Humans are the alligators God flushed down the toilet," said the marker.

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_Thoughts?_


	2. Back Bender

_Warning: Gender Dysphoria, Childhood Sexuality_

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**Chapter Two: Back Bender **

He was nothing but a boy, and I was barely more than a toddler. During my fifth birthday I found myself entranced in the darkness of a circus tent, and there was only the silent whooshing of flames ripping through oxygen to counteract the ever present awes from a tightly clustered audience. The performer was stark in the way that he was frighteningly aged for someone so young, but I had no room to talk at the time because simply tying my shoes put me on a pedestal. Flames bobbed around with flickering lights reflecting off the whitest teeth I'd ever seen in my short life, and his biceps were sculpted by the kind of torturous routine I was yet to experience myself. There were two separate fires creating a crisscross of coded choreography while there was one child's twinkling grin with teeth on the brink of plummeting from his gums like ripened apples. Before my balls have even dropped I am infatuated with the same sex, and it was inebriating.

Infatuation could be the wrong word for it. At that point, I'm in love with the concept of a man. It's the kind of love that is fresh and sticky to the touch like a scraped knee. I wanted to ask my mother why my sternum had been doused in white gas and greeted with a lit match, but looking away wasn't an option. He was brilliant in a forbidden way all while being what I needed. This wasn't an obscure want injected into my bone marrow by the propaganda of advertising. This wasn't a toy on the shelf. This was open heart surgery, and the importance only deepened when an explosion of light blew open my ocean encased pupils. The cheering audience must have been deafening at this point, but all I could focus on was a panting chest slickened by sweat. His hair was the colorization of the cherry popsicles I sucked free of juice on the park's playground, and at five years old I was teetering on the edge of already wanting to suck a man off.

That same day I rode an elephant, but the excitement was lost on me because Mom and Dad had decided against buying me and my brother tickets for the freaks' tent. Too young, too impressionable, too naïve; but I wanted to see the twin girls my age with their single set of legs and the woman in a glittering nude suit slip knives down her throat. There was a strange comradery among these people, and I wanted to be like them, but I was _normal_. People called me the handsome golden boy whenever Mom and Dad guided me through our church's front doors. In response—as the stained glass windows' light reflected off my freckled face in sheets off purple and blue—I pouted in silent rebellion. _God doesn't like silly faces_, my mom would tell me as she handed me the Book of Common Prayer, and my frown only deepened until the muscles in my face began to ache. There was a strong misconception among those who knew me that believed I had been born with the incapacity to care.

My family house was American apple pie, which was gruesomely ironic when the report came in my father had been burnt to dust in Vietnam. The day the uniformed men stepped onto our front porch with a neatly folded American flag I was seventeen and locked away in the upstairs bedroom holding the tube of rose lipstick stolen from my mother's vanity. All facial muscles were relaxed, but I held the kind of ambition instilled through years of gymnastic coaching. The inside of my guts were a roaring forest fire. Before me was the imagery of a boy too pretty not to marry his high school sweetheart he didn't look at when he fucked. Our eyes locked, and I was eating away the chapped skin on my lips with eyes too watery and a body too angular. There was an Adam's apple I had fantasized about filing down until it resembled the terrain of the Great Plains, but I couldn't shred the skin across my neck without fizzling out with a burst of bubbling blood. I didn't care about my father dying. I didn't care about my mother's coyote wailing in front of two men who more than likely had a laundry list of corpses to present to mothers, daughters, and sisters. This was about me.

"Dad's dead." Sora's voice filtered into our bedroom, and my fingers clasped around the tube of makeup as a quick form of concealment. He was crying. Of course, he was crying. "Daddy's dead."

We were fraternal twins. Half the time people couldn't tell because of the way we both looked and carried ourselves, but my brother had been born before me. It was comedic to refer to me as the _baby_. Roxas the youngest with his button nose and adorable freckles that had somehow managed to filter out of Sora's gene pool and make me the victim of an unending onslaught of ruthless compliments. Not that they genuinely were compliments. They were mocking observations of how my masculinity was doddering on the edge of a cliff. One swift kick of estrogen, and I could have gone tumbling down the dune of ladylikeness. My attitude was my only saving grace.

"I know." That was a lie. "Go away."

"Aren't you sad?"

As much as I wanted to penalize Sora for even asking, I knew it wasn't fair. Dad had loved him in a way that was naturally unconditional for a parent and his child. I, on the other hand, became the striking disappointment the second the word 'gymnast' drifted from my lips at the tender age of five years old. Being able to bring my toes to the back of my head wasn't as impressive as swinging a wooden bat against a fastball. While Sora was out back with his gloved hand I was pushing the limits of my human flexibility because I didn't just want to be distinguished in gymnastics. I wanted to be a contortionist. Like so many children with grand imaginations, I strove to be qualified for the circus. The difference between me and the majority was that I had obsessively conditioned myself to force a dream into a potential reality. Along with this, I had developed to be conventionally succinct, but my interiors were a glob of metaphorical genitalia displaced and an ugly identity that made pounding my body until it fit my desired mold seem ideal. I needed a body shop to fix my fucked up frame. I needed to be somewhere where being who I was wasn't a moral travesty.

"I'm sad." That was a lie, too.

It was early autumn of 1970 when I woke up one morning with the age of eighteen still freshly implanted into my skull. There was the ceiling above my crusted over eyes, and there were two letters downstairs my mother had repeatedly wrung between her trembling fingers and held up to the kitchen light. Sora and I had been anticipating the envelopes for far too long, and Mother had been fervently praying for our birthday to drop off the face of the planet because of that god forsaken lottery. The lottery was an absolute joke and mockery of any other lottery in existence. It was a fine way to drag unneeded individuals like me into the military service. There was information forged into a concise parchment of death, and due to me being born exactly seven minutes after Sora I was a hopeless cause. With my father dead and him being the first born, Sora could plead survivorship and sit at home with our mother. He could go to college, marry my girlfriend when I was shot through the chest, and _live_. He'd always been the one with the divine right to live.

There's something so distinctly hopeless about the draft. Not the idea alone, though. What creates the drained sensation of being chained down by a formidable monster is the death toll you find yourself growing seemingly accustomed to. While it's happening to others it never crosses your mind that there's a chance you could find yourself wading through the foliage of the Vietnam jungles; Stepping on spiked traps covered in fecal matter to insure infection or flitting through tripwires destined to send you through the tunnel of light. None of those concepts become realities until there's a piece of paper in your hands instructing you without any sense of apology. There's nothing but false congratulations on an inevitable death. Not a single one of my older friends had returned since seemingly disappearing off the face of the planet. Aside from a couple letters, the only time I heard about my war bound acquaintances was when the violence had gobbled them up. War never spat anyone out in one piece. It was at the dining table with a stack of blueberry pancakes steaming in front of me when I realized I could either run or succumb to a short life with nothing to show.

"They always place twins together." Sora had the nerve to sound excited as he touched our mom's tensed shoulder. "Don't worry, Momma. We'll keep an eye on one another."

He was wrong. He was beyond wrong.

That same night I didn't kiss my mother goodbye or think twice about my brother when I packed up what I could fit into two suitcases. There was impending doom on the brink of my life's horizon, and I didn't fear the potential prison time as I hurriedly stuffed article after article of clothing into my modest luggage. There was a place I knew I could go where the reality my government had forged for me would become null. What I was good at was the least conventional during guerrilla warfare, and I wasn't the kind of person capable of letting thirteen years of devotion and dreaming go to such miserable waste. I could flip my anatomy into a pretzel without thinking twice about how it was done. The tips of my toes could touch the floor with my heel simultaneously anchored down, and I had screamed through gritted teeth, sobbed during spectacular muscle spasms, and fought alongside elder gymnasts until each limb burned like hell had been injected into my veins as a form of anti-heroin.

"Roxas," Sora sleepily murmured my name, "what are you doing up?"

"I'm getting a drink of water."

The moon's lighting created a semidarkness throughout the entirety of the bedroom, and I couldn't look at my twin as he turned onto his side. He was drooling on his pillow and so reassured I would be there for him when he woke up the next morning. Sora was a romantic with the best in everyone always present in his feeble mind. I loved him. I loved him more than anyone in the entire universe, and I blamed the quality time we spent together suckling thumbs in my mother's uterus for that. That didn't mean I couldn't leave him, though. My obligations to him were limited when he had been the one to gain _every_ advantage since we had broken into the world of the living. For once, he was going to have to fend for himself and understand the veracity of being alone.

Before heading out the front door of my mother's kitchen that had grown more and more barren without my father's demand for a nightly feast I snatched the convicting envelope off the counter. The piece of paper was powerful in the way that it was a firm reminder of why I was abandoning my post as America's disposable sweetheart. I was not another ploy for Uncle Sam, and I'd be damned before I ever thought twice about the decision to run. This wasn't being a coward. Not in my opinion, anyway. Taking that long walk through Indian summer air toward the bus stop with my feeble summer job's savings tucked away was a statement to the entire universe. I wasn't a bone for the Viet Cong. My life had meaning, and that's what mattered.

Our town's bus stop was meager, but it served its purpose. With flickering lights at the mercy of mesmerized bugs, there was no one in the leaky mint painted building but an uninterested woman popping gum behind the ticket counter. Along the back wall of the station was the Holy Grail of tourist information for those interested in what little my hometown had to offer. I strode toward the source of information in search of a particular poster because it was what I needed to pinpoint my ticket's direction.

When my eyes landed on the obnoxiously colored piece of paper purposely draped over a majority of the other current events I didn't think twice about ripping it off the wall. There was a tastefully sketched collage of performance animals across the top as a segment of the gaudy banner with the Italian words _Tredici Circo_ scrawled through in a common looking script. Beneath the foreign name in stark English was the even more important kitschy text.

_Flurry of Dancing Flames _

My weight shifted onto a single foot as I recalled that fateful night in the circus over a decade beforehand. I had never learned of the man's age, but I knew for a fact he currently couldn't be much younger than his mid-twenties. The thought alone was enticing, and I pushed my fingers through my infamously untamable cowlick before attempting to correct my lewd thoughts. There was no hope for me, and I resigned myself to a glamorous seat in hell before scanning the dates and cities until I was certain I had lined up where exactly my one way ticket would lead me. Never before had I ventured into the state of Oklahoma, but there was a first for everything. Besides, I had three novels to shove my nose into while bus wheels ate up stretches of pavement and unprecedented gravel. Behind me would be distant memories of a time when I ate Thanksgiving dinner with my mother, father and brother. Never again did I intend on celebrating Christmas with my mother's frazzled attitude toward whether or not her cheese tray was prestigious enough for her bitch mother-in-law. I wouldn't have to stifle groans of exhaustion at being referred to as the ideal _son_ or stuff my knuckles into my mouth at the thought of marrying a woman, fucking a woman, and watching my unwanted children shred free from a _woman_.

In high school I had taken three years of Italian. I'd hated every minute of it and only held it in contempt even more when I discovered my knack for linguistics. Somehow, I'd convinced myself speaking a second language was a useful tool even though I wasn't sure why. The sole Italian family in my hometown was cliché in the way that they ran a restaurant, and I had long ago accepted my suspicions of them incestuously intermarrying as a fact. Either way, that was why one of the novels in my bag just so happened to be the Italian version of _Scaramouche_. The book was a French Revolution romance based around a double-dealing clown. I had convinced myself it was humorously relevant enough.

Pouring over the intermediate Italian was the quickest method to obtaining a headache I'd ever discovered in my entire life, but it kept me occupied during the eight hour bus ride. The need for a nerve stiller was what saved me from putting down the book or swapping it out for something leisurely. A relaxing read would have given me the opportunity to dwell on potentially being turned away by whoever I begged for an audition from. That being said, I was about twenty seconds away from beating my own nose into my brain because the book was so dull I could only refer to it as a personal catastrophe. Lucky for me I hadn't purchased the sack of shit novel with my own money, and instead of reading past the second chapter I found myself preoccupied with the ways I could someday get back at my Italian teacher. _Scaramouche_ had been a graduation gift, and I wondered how difficult it would be to shove the hardback copy up the man's ass. My grandmother had given me less condescending Christmas presents, and she had been the hag to present me with a pair of sheers for my _sheep _hair.

Eventually, I caved and just slept.

There are a lot of things high school doesn't prepare you for. No one tells you about loans, or how to properly write a check, or how having a child outside of wedlock genuinely is the worst idea imaginable. A lot of the time you're not even certain about the purpose of your dick until you start poking around on your own, and even then you're still not sure why you have it because Sex Ed was taught by a religious prune. School teaches you that English classes and math classes eventually live in a state of miserable symbiosis known as Algebra. School teaches you the faux-importance of homecoming and coddles misery in the way that getting a swirly genuinely ends up seeming like a lifelong trauma. School does _not_ teach you that people with more than four limbs exist or that there's a way to make a living by being spectacularly hairy or impressively obese. School does _not_ teach you that people can eat blades, have skin like a crocodile or roll a cigar without any hands or feet. Then again, I guess it's not right to expect much from the United States' public school system.

When I reached my stop in Oklahoma the sun was greeting the horizon with sweet kisses of tart citrus. My mouth was like God had rubbed a saltlick across my taste buds for the entirety of my death sleep, and I had no idea where the hell I was. All I had was an irrelevant mid-sized cities name where girls were wearing shorts to soak up the sudden spell of warmth alongside the dancing fountains right outside the station. The entire temporary placement was cheery and ideal, and there I was with the kind of disgruntled fatigue eating my typically loosened muscles alive. Being tense was the absolute worst for me, and I tried to think of ways to force myself into a fluid mindset because I needed to be ready for anything.

One cup of water and a set of directions later and I was meandering down a partially abandoned backstreet toward what was supposed to be an open field overthrown by trailers and men attempting to raise the gaudy tent with its candy cane stripes. What I was in for was completely unparalleled to my previous assumption of my reception. I had expected immediate disregard on the entire troupe's part, but the second my booted feet stepped onto the freshly mowed grass there was an immediate pause in what had previously been a boisterous atmosphere. I hadn't even made my way toward the circle of trailers that were obviously the more up kept models for vital performers, and the men soaked to the bone in sweat with aching arms and calves were scanning me over in surprise. There was no scrutiny, but they were obviously beleaguered by my presence. It was only more motivation to remain stoic because I couldn't be slack jaw. I had too much riding on the situation to turn and head home solely because laborers had given me the once over.

"Chum; do you even know where you are?"

A strikingly thick English accent greeted me at the halfway point, and I wondered how it was physically possible for news to spread fast enough for a greeter to show. The man was clearly in his early thirties with a blond goatee that had somehow managed to avoid becoming flesh colored. His frame was constructed of nothing but an acquainted stance, and he was so approachable I didn't consider stopping until we were standing in front of one another. He was adorned in nothing but a white t-shirt and remarkably fitted jeans. Whatever he played a part of in the circus required intensive physical activity because he was nothing but pure muscle. It was either that or he was extremely health conscious.

"I'm here to audition." Dropping a suitcase, I didn't think twice about offering my hand for a shake. "Roxas Maddox."

He was clearly confused, but he readily took my hand. "Luxord—and that's it. All people have ever called me is Luxord, and I'm keeping it that way."

There was a sweeping confidence that followed when he decided to take me directly to the ringmaster who was the sole person allowed to call the shots for the circus' employment. His name was Xemnas, and Luxord didn't pay much attention to me after gifting me with the boss' name. I didn't comment on it because I knew it wasn't my place to question anyone's methods, but Luxord was going great lengths to avoid coming in contact with anyone. As we wove through the maze of quiet trailers where lights were dimmed and only the occasional chatter about surprisingly domestic topics filtered past me, I found myself glancing around in hopes of spotting anything familiar from my childhood memory. Sinking my teeth into something even remotely conversant was more appealing than a shower, at that point. If I could somehow interlink myself with the setup, then there was a chance I could absorb a sense of much needed ownership. Until I made it I would have to fake it.

"Luxord, are you smuggling in your bastard child?"

He appeared in front of us as if seemingly out of air, and the fresh face was adorned with an ornamental eye patch and cocky simper that wasn't exactly off putting but not inviting neither. The sigh Luxord gave was one of evident defeat, and he followed it with a grumble signifying he was pissed off about the situation. I had no idea what was going on, but my determination to remain unaffected was beyond obnoxious.

"He's _auditioning_." How thick Luxord's accent was continued to mesmerize me. "This abhorrent and strikingly repugnant swine's name is Xigbar. He's a good for nothing sharp shoot. Really isn't much reason for him to be here. Xigbar, this is Roxas."

"Hey, cut me some slack—wait, who the hell auditions?" Xigbar was furrowing his eyebrows and giving Luxord a stare asking twenty million questions. Truly, it was impressive considering he had one fucking eye. "You, short dude, what's your expertise?"

"Contortionism," I said, and I noted how flat I sounded.

That seemed to convince him of my authenticity. "Well, maybe the old fuck will be interested. We don't have a lot of nice lookin' kids like you around. Aside from the twins and the shit stain fire crotch with his self-loving venereal disease ridden cock—"

"Before you get mighty heavy handed," Luxord interrupted him, "I'm going to take 'im over. Don't tell anyone, you big mouthed fuck. I'll skin you and use your back tattoos as doilies."

"I can keep a secret."

Luxord wasn't convinced.

We approached the final trailer, and the mock building's size was a declaration in itself. Luxord motioned for me to drop my suitcases outside only to knock on the door, wait for a deep voice to give him permission to enter, and leave me stranded. There was a domineering five minutes that followed before he reappeared with the kind of smirking smile I could only deem as a good thing. Pointing at the door with a quick nod, he patted my shoulder before leaning over to speak to me as if talking to a mentally incapacitated five year old.

"You better impress him, ya sapling. It'll be my neck if you're absolutely shit."

Left alone in front of the door again with the parting warning, I wasn't sure if I should knock or not. So, I didn't. Clamming fingers wrapped around the door's handle after maneuvering past the screen door, and I pulled the gateway open as if thrusting through Pandora's Box. There was the immediate sense of dread when I realized I had absolutely no spine in that moment and that moment alone. I attempted to reassure myself that it a good thing because maybe my nervousness would congeal my guts into a thick slime and it'd lubricate the entirety of my form. I wasn't stupid enough to genuinely believe anatomy worked that way, but it was a comforting scenario.

"Roxas Maddox."

The thickly accented voice with a threateningly deep tenor somehow managed to greet me before I glanced toward the person at the desk. Xemnas was surrounded by shelves upon shelves of oddities I couldn't have possibly managed to summon from even my sickest childhood imagination. Aside from the seemingly continuous medley of black and white and even sepia photos of some of the strangest performers pasted directly behind him, the most pronounced pieces were the jars lining the top border of the room. Large jars brimming with foggy liquid and housing what appeared to be fetuses. They weren't everyday dead babies, though. I was staring at a frightening assortment of deformed children who hopefully had never breathed a single sweep of air outside the womb.

"They're impressive, aren't they?" Xemnas had an Italian accent. "Years ago I put them on display in my dime museum, but after several robberies and general complaints from humanists, I decided they were better off in my private collection. My grandson has the other half. This isn't my collection in its entirety."

"Impressive," my words weren't even, "I'm here to audition."

"I'm aware," he said, and he was suddenly sounding clipped. I couldn't blame him. I wasn't tactful. "I haven't been holding auditions. I personally pick reputable talent from around the world, and I'm already expecting my new performers this afternoon. If you manage to—"

Before he could turn me down, I was spitting out words. "I'm good. I'm more than good."

Interjecting probably hadn't been the wisest decision, but I'd be damned before he turned me away without giving me a chance. There was an intense gaze connection, and it was then that I realized something I hadn't even taken note of because his eyes were sinisterly entrancing. Settled on the desk before him wasn't just a single set of hands. No, there were four open palms lazily placed on the oaken desk; and though my entire body reverberated in surprise, I didn't bother with breaking my stern expression or flinching from his evident anger. To him I was the most disposable human being he had ever laid eyes on, but I wasn't prepared to give him the satisfaction of turning me away because I was not going to Vietnam. I was not going to be a slave unless the enslavement was on my terms. I could be a slave to my own talents, but not a cause I had no knowledge of. Seriously, I had absolutely no clue why the United States was even in Vietnam. No one did, and it was vile.

"How old are you, Roxas?"

"Eighteen."

Not another word was going to be said about refusing me because without an invitation I was suddenly back bending myself into a pretzel. The transition was fortunately smooth considering I hadn't previously stretched, but I kept telling myself this was it. The determination was how I effortlessly rolled myself out of the position only to back bend again until my hands were directly behind my heels. Twisting my lips to the side to make an expression of concentration, I lifted my feet and was suddenly in what was referred to as a back bender handstand. Though I was technically doing a handstand, my back was still completely curved. When feeling lazy I could even let my feet hang by ears. They were minimal tricks, but they were enough to get the point across that I wasn't full of it.

"Look," I began as I slowly made my way into an upright position, "contortionism is all I'm good at. I can't go back to where I came from either."

There was another interruption as Xemnas went to part his lips with a significantly less stern expression, but this time the rudeness wasn't my doing. His eyes narrowed into the kind of dagger stare that made my heart shiver; and though the voice had been muffled, it was soon overpowering us both because the front door wasn't closed long. The slab of metal was forced open and the first thing that caught the corner of my eye was a brilliant flash of red. This was followed by jade, and my fingernails were soon digging into the palms of my hands. That being said, it was the only form of tenseness my body was allowed to perform. Easier said than done when a much lighter yet still gravel spotted Italian accent was barking out domineering words at a man who radiated power.

When our eyes locked I could feel my lips faintly part because there was absolutely no way he was human. His features were constructed from some kind of sick joke that informed the rest of the world nothing else could compare. He was _it_. This man was nothing but olive skinned beauty with the kind of natural anger I was having a difficult time not melting beneath. He was all heat and rage, and I was on the brink of eating my gums until blood poured out onto my tongue. There was no way for me to comprehend him while attempting to remain completely professional. That was the only reason I forced myself to look away and stare straight ahead as if someone had doused me in glacial water. If I didn't remain completely composed, then I would die. I was standing beside the single individual who had managed to unknowingly cultivate my entire life. He was the grown version of the boy I had watched throw around heaps of fire as a not-so-innocent child.

"I'm in the middle of business." Xemnas voice was an onslaught of murders.

"And I'm talking business."

Something about this confrontation was apparently out of the norm because—after the redhead realized Xemnas wasn't going to budge and speak openly with him—he outright flinched. It was a sharp jolt of disbelief: as fast as he had shown up, he was out the door. The only difference between his abrupt entrance and exit was the finalizing shatter of glass that made Xemnas exhale with subtly gritted teeth.

"My grandson," he said dismissively before waving me off. "You, Roxas Maddox, find Luxord and inform him I'm putting you under his watchful eye. Luxord will send you to Saïx when he's unoccupied. He'll let me know if you're talented or simply an aesthetic asset. Right now I'm too busy for you."

Opening my mouth to thank him, I stopped and pushed my fingers through my hair in relief. Though there was more disbelief than anything else, I didn't think to second guess a damn decision on his part as I left his trailer with a lighter step than I had entered with. Unorthodox, yes, but just like that I was _Tredici Circo's_ next contortionist. Not even the glass crunching beneath my boots as I hit the makeshift steps could distract me from my undeniable happiness. Vietnam could kiss my freckle spotted ass.


End file.
